News Release

Trump’s “New Lies” on Medicare-for-All

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ROBERT WEISSMAN, Mike Stankiewicz, mstankiewicz@citizen.org, Angela Bradbery, abradbery@citizen.org@Public_Citizen
President of Public Citizen, Weissman just released a statement, “Fact Check: Trump is Dead Wrong on Medicare-for-All“:”Lies and deceptions from Trump are nothing new. Lies and deceptions from Trump about Medicare-for All are new, so it’s worth correcting his USA Todaycolumn [“Democrats ‘Medicare for All’ plan will demolish promises to seniors.”] attacking such a system.

“One reason his attacks on Medicare-for-All are new is that he probably has supported it in the past. But whatever, there’s no reason to think Trump particularly believed what he said then, or what he says now. On to the major lies and deceits:

“Medicare-for-All would not ‘end Medicare as we know it and take away benefits that seniors have paid for all their lives.’ The reason it’s called Medicare-for-All is because it would take the existing program and expand it to everyone. Seniors’ benefits would not be taken away — in fact, they would be improved, but everyone else would gain the benefits of Medicare, too.

“Medicare-for-All is not going to cost an ‘astonishing $32.6 trillion’ over 10 years, because it will introduce major savings not adequately accounted for in the study Trump cites. Significant savings would come from eliminating vast amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy imposed by the current dysfunctional system, and steeply dropping costs for brand-name pharmaceuticals. But even if Medicare-for-All cost as much as Trump alleges, that amount would be LESS than projections for our current system, which also leaves tens of millions of Americans without coverage.” See related Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “Even Koch-Backed Think Tank Finds Medicare for All Would Cut Health Care Spending” featuring Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, distinguished professors of health policy at the City University of New York at Hunter College and lecturers in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

See full Public Citizen statement here.